The real status quo we are being asked to challenge is our beliefs. The ones we don’t even consciously know why we hold. The question “why?” is perhaps our best tool for this.That single question is the flashlight into the dark expanse of our own belief system, it is what wedges us from the belief we hold and asks us to look at ourselves from a wider lens.

If our beliefs create our reality, we owe it to ourselves to be curious. Each time we use a word such as “right/wrong”, “good/bad”, “acceptable/unacceptable”,“normal/weird”,we have the opportunity to peel back a layer or two (or twelve) and see what is really there. These adjectives are all too often packing paper to our beliefs, keeping them insulated from who we’ve become.

What if each time we heard our own voice respond in one of these words, we immediately followed with “why?” and allow ourselves to be with whatever discomfort arrises?

As Neil Donald Walsch says, “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”Sometimes we collapse comfort into complacency and “why?” is our opportunity to excavate our truth from the rubble of cultural norms, out-dated patterns and disjointed beliefs.When we keep ourselves on our own toes with an open mind, we allow ourselves to evolve. Maybe a belief we held at one time doesn’t quite fit who we are now. Life may be happening outside of us but our aliveness is completely up to us. The more awake we are to our choices and why we choose them, the more alive we are, every. single. moment.